Article excerpt

WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency
knew about PCB contamination at specific sites along the Texas
Eastern Corp. pipeline as early as the autumn of 1985, but took no
immediate action to protect public health at the sites, according to
internal agency documents.

Agency officials had said that they were unable to act more
quickly to deal with the contamination because they had insufficient
information from the company.

But EPA officials interviewed over the weekend conceded that, in
retrospect, it appeared that the agency should have moved faster to
protect the public from the contamination and at the very least to
have notified the state and local governments of the potential
dangers.

The documents also show that the head of the agency's toxic
substances program, Assistant Administrator John A. Moore, believed
that the pipeline company might have "knowingly and willfully"
violated the Toxic Substances Control Act. In a memorandum that he
wrote on June 30, 1986, to Richard H. Mays, the agency's acting head
of enforcement, Moore asked that the issue be reviewed for a
possible criminal investigation.

Agency enforcement officials are now taking civil administrative
action against Houston-based Texas Eastern Gas Pipeline, which
acknowledged burying PCBs, polychloinated biphenyls, at 51 sites
along its right of way. But agency officials have said they were
not considering criminal charges against the company because there
was no evidence that it had willfully violated the law.

Several agency officials said that they had not ruled out a
criminal investigation of Texas Eastern and that such an
investigation remained a distinct possibility.

The Texas Eastern pipeline runs from the Texas-Mexico border to
the New York City area. On Feb. 24, the company released a list of
12 states where it acknowledged burying PCBs. In addition to New
Jersey, they were: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Arkansas, Missouri,
Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. …